Code of Ethics

Country: Poland

I

The basic obligation of a journalist is to seek after the truth and to publish it. Manipulation of facts is illicit. Any own comment or hypothesis of the author should be clearly separated from information. Special accuracy in accessing information. An author is obliged on his/her own initiative to rectify information when it appears to be false or inaccurate. No motive, no pressures or inspirations justify the delivery of false or unverified information.

II

A journalist is obliged to keep and to preserve professional secrecy if the informant requests anonymity.

III

Protection of personal values should not be violated. However, information on the private lives of the persons who fulfil a public function or who themselves introduce their privacy into the public life is admissible. It is inadmissible to use injurious words which offend human dignity, to interpose objections which degrade a person in public opinion or expose to risk of discredit; to use blackmail.

IV

To presume the guilt of a defendant prior to the relevant court decision is inadmissible.

V

Any publications which propagate war, violence, outrage or injure the feelings of the religious persons and unbelievers, the national feelings, the human rights, cultural individualities or propagate pornography are absolutely prohibited.

VI

In order to protect a journalist against the loss of professional independence, he or she is not allowed to accept any profits for himself/herself or his/her family for publishing or not publishing proffered material. Publishing of materials which are in the nature of cryptoadvertising is inadmissible.

VII

Protection of copyright is an essential ethical norm. Overt and covert plagiarism, internal and external, is an inadmissible violation of this norm. The same goes for the piece of work by a journalist as by a person of some other profession. The authorial titles are protected. It is not allowed to retouch the texts or to use materials and works without the consent of their authors or to exploit another’s journalistic authorial ideas.

VIII

Activity which causes professional harm to a fellow journalist or constitutes professional disloyalty is forbidden. Making of any malicious difficulties by a journalist in publishing other journalist’s material is ïnadmissible.

IX

To perform the official order of its filling offends the ethical norms of journalistic profession is blameful.

X

The violation of the Association’s Statute which exposes the AJRP to losses and harm is to be adjudicated the journalistic judicature.

XI

Behaviour or activity which brings discredit on the journalistic profession are inadmissible.

XII

Offenders against the MCJ will be held accountable. If such persons are unknown or when the editorial office refuses to reveal thename of the actual offender, the person who accepted the material for publication will be held accountable.

XIII

An act incompatible with the MCJ is prescribed after 5 years since its disclosure unless the Supreme Journalists’ Court decides otherwise in the particular cause.

XIV

All doubts, relating to the interpretation of the norms of the MCJ, are determined by the resolution of the Supreme Journalists’ Court.

XV

For failure to observe the principles and norms of the MCJ, the competent journalists’ court imposes penalties appropriate to the severity of the misdemeanour and to the finding of guilty – from admonition, through reprimand, withholding of membership.

Update required.

Please, send the new version of the code to ethicnet@uta.fi.